Titanic 2.0 Meets Iceberg 2.0

The likely availability of distributed, low cost, intelligent, OCR-scanning will put print publishers in pretty much the same boat as the music industry. Digital copying of text will be as easy and as useful as digital copying of recorded music (until recently digital copying meant copying the dumb image, not capturing the textual information in the typography. Google Book Search changed that).

I point this out not out of a desire to “put the frighteners on” print publishers, but to suggest that there is still time enough for print to get out of the hole the music business has dug itself. Get licensing those digital editions! Provide legitimate low cost access to everything for which you have a PDF file and valid title! There is no point in hanging back, publishers must build those digital markets before your customers start mode-shifting your content — its a business imperative. The iPhone creates great potential for publishers, but if they dont seize it, they will find they have lost much more than a new opportunity.

Ah, such hope! That a jillion voices all saying the same damned thing will finally penetrate the thick skulls of an ollllld entrenched industry.

I see such tactics worked very well with all the Oil Companies. I mean, can’t we all go out and buy Exxon-Mobil solar panels?! Aren’t we all using BP quantum heaters? And Citgo zero point energy slabs in our cellphones?

I don’t want Comments from Suits within their constipated conglomerates telling me “We’re really trying.” In plain talk: Fuck that shit. Must I pull that stupid Yoda quote out of my ass to wave at you? (And if you don’t know that Yoda quote, please take that as a sign of your obsolescence and retire!)

While you lot diddle one another — I read a wonderful term for you today: pearl-clutchers! — your readership is taking the matter into their own hands with The Darknet.

Spray as much DRM as you like on things. The DarkNets will built a better Removal Tool.

That’s when you even bother to release something in e. For all that stuff still trapped in p? Too much for your continued well-being already exists in e. Just ask Harry Potter fans!

Get it done.

Oh, and if you want to see just how feeble and pathetic your efforts to date have been, see The eBook Test blog. That’s how sad you lot really are!